


Yet Another “Modern Girl in Thedas” Self-Indulgent Author-Insert Fanfic

by imjusthereforthefanporn



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Mary Sue, Modern Girl in Thedas, POV First Person, Self-Insert, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-05 01:14:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5355440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imjusthereforthefanporn/pseuds/imjusthereforthefanporn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Modern Girl in Thedas" stories are my guilty pleasure and I decided that it was time to write my own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What the fuck?!

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings (PLEASE READ!)
> 
> Thedas is a dark and dangerous world in which terrible things are constantly happening and most people's lives are, to quote Hobbes, “nasty, brutish, and short.” This story will reflect that. 
> 
> If you have triggers for abuse, sexual violence, self harm, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide and suicidal ideation, war and combat, extreme poverty, or first-person portrayals of mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, disassociation, and PTSD, then I recommend against reading this story. 
> 
> You can also expect major character deaths, infuriating injustices, morally questionable decisions, historically accurate personal hygiene practices, and a one-woman campaign of American cultural imperialism with a side of “white savior” complex. I will piss you off. 
> 
> If any of the above is likely to upset your emotional equilibrium enough to send you to a dark place in your mind then I urge you to please practice good self-care and skip this story.
> 
> If you have any questions about specific triggers, please feel free to leave them as comments on the first chapter and I will answer them as quickly as possible.

I woke up in pain.

This, by itself, was not unusual – I wake up in pain every day – but the locations and intensity of today's pains were new. My knees felt bruised, my legs were almost numb, something heavy was chafing at my wrists, and my left hand _burned_.

I opened my eyes to discover that I was not in my bed. Instead, I was manacled and kneeling on a cold stone floor in a dimly lit room. Where the fuck was I? My mind immediately flashed to all those Criminal Minds episodes about serial killers kidnapping women and keeping them captive in their basement dungeons, subjecting them to days or weeks of rape and torture before finally killing them. Was this the place where I died?

I flinched at the bang of a door slamming open. My stomach churned with dread at the sound of approaching footsteps and I struggled to breathe. What would he do me?

I forced myself to look up. To my surprise and partial relief, it was two women. The taller woman had light olive skin, short black hair, and fresh scars on both cheeks. She wore some sort of dominatrix outfit featuring a metal corset over a curve-hugging black leather bodysuit. The shorter woman wore a shiny coat with purple accents. The hood obscured most of her features but I caught a glimpse of pale skin and red hair.

“Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now,” demanded the tall woman.

My stomach lurched. Oh shit, they really were serial killers.

She continued, “The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead – except for you.”

“What the fuck?!” I exclaimed, trying to make sense of what I was hearing.

She grabbed the manacles and jerked my hands upward. “Explain this!”

A sudden flare of green lit up the room as my left hand throbbed with pain. I stared in shock at the flickering gash. It was the Anchor. From Dragon Age. What the fuck.

My mind whirled, desperately trying to rationalize what I was seeing.

“This is some sort of elaborate prank!” I surmised, then barked with laughter. I was being filmed for one of those hidden-camera reality TV shows. This one's gimmick must be trying to trick gamers into believing that they were inside a game and then laughing if they fell for it.

My obsession with the Dragon Age franchise was no secret to anyone who knew me. I wondered which of my friends submitted my information to the show? I bet it was Scott.

“This is no prank,” the actress playing Cassandra growled as she took a step toward me. I scanned her up and down, impressed by how much she resembled her character. They'd done a great job on her costume, too – now that I'd had a better look at it, it was clear that it was meant to be armor, not fetish wear. I relaxed, feeling silly for not recognizing who she was supposed to be sooner.

“Wow, you really do look like her!” I gushed. “How did you make the Anchor so realistic? Is that blacklight paint on my hand? Is there, like, a taser or something built into the manacles to shock me?”

“Quit speaking nonsense!” She shouted and pretended like she was going to hit me. Of course, the actress playing Leliana grabbed her wrist to stop her. Their choreography of this scene was spot-on despite having to improvise new lines around my responses.

“We need her, Cassandra.” Whoever cast her as Leliana deserved a raise. She wasn't just a perfect lookalike; she had the voice and accent down too.

“Do you remember what happened? How this began?” she asked me.

I knew that I was supposed to say something about running from spiders and seeing a woman, but instead of ad-libbing my lines I took a moment to consider her question. I actually _didn't_ remember. I couldn't even remember the last thing I'd been doing before I woke up here. It was just like when I took Ambien – oh, those fuckers.

“Wait, how did I get here? Did you – did you DRUG me to get me on the set?” I flashed hot with rage and began to tremble, blinking back tears. “Not cool. Not cool. That is definitely not okay! Stop this right now. End scene.”

But the actress playing Cassandra refused to break character. “Go the forward camp, Leliana. I will take her to the rift.”

“Okay, fine,” I bit out. I would play along and get it over with so I could get out of here. “This is the part where I ask you what happened and you tell me that it will be easier to show me, right? Let's go.”

She flinched at my words but still hauled me to my feet. Every joint in my body protested and I swayed as a wave of vertigo rolled over me. I closed my eyes and tried to regain my balance while she replaced the manacles with rope.

How much longer could they keep this stupid scenario going? The big reveal that it was all a joke had to be soon. And then I would leave and hire the sharkiest lawyer I could find to sue the crap out of whichever studio produced this show.

A sharp tug on my wrists forced me to stumble forward. “Wait --” I choked out; I was still dizzy. But 'Cassandra' ignored my protest and rudely pushed me toward the cell door.

I staggered along behind her while trying to stomp some of the pins and needles out of my feet. I only had a vague impression of where we were going – candle-lit stone walls, dungeon, long hallway, stairs – because I was too busy seething to pay much attention to the sets. I was going to rip Scott a new asshole if it turned out that he was indeed the one who signed me up for this shit.

A sharp draft of cold air brought my attention back to the present as Cassandra pushed open the heavy wooden door at the top of the stairs. I stumbled through and was temporarily blinded by how bright it was on the other side. I stood there in the biting cold and waited for my eyes to adjust. The odors of woodsmoke and sewage assaulted my nose. I felt a snowflake melt on my cheek and realized that I had to be outdoors.

I squinted up at the sky and gasped. That was definitely not a green screen and this was definitely not the set of a TV show.

 

 

 


	2. What if all of this was actually real?

_ Previously on YAMGITSIAIF:  _ _I squinted up at the sky and gasped. That was definitely not a green screen and this was definitely not the set of a TV show._

 

I felt like I was floating. Separating from my body and just drifting away. Away from the gently falling snow. Away from the medieval-era architecture. Away from all the people milling about wearing authentic-looking – no, _actually authentic_ – period clothing. Away from the swirly green hole in the sky.

A murmur gradually penetrated the fog of my mind and I realized that someone was speaking to me. “...just the largest. All caused by the explosion at the Conclave.”

I snapped back to my body with a jerk.

“This can't be rea–” I tried to speak but choked on a scream instead. Pain, unbearable pain unlike anything I'd ever experienced before shot through my hand and up my left arm.

I fell to my knees and cradled my bound hands to my stomach. Scratchy rope abraded my wrists. Icy wet slush seeped into my pants. My ears stung and ached from the freezing cold air.

It _felt_ real.

“Each time the breach expands, your mark spreads and it _is_ killing you.” Said the actress playing – no, said _Cassandra_. “It may be the key to stopping this but there isn't much time.”

“This has to be a dream. Or a hallucination,” I muttered to myself. Was I having a psychotic break?

Cassandra crouched down and shook me by my shoulders.

“This is no dream!” she shouted in my face. I winced and wrinkled my nose; I guess there's no toothpaste in Thedas. “You _must_ help us close the Breach.”

Was this really happening? No, this couldn't be happening. This had to be just a very vivid lucid dream. Or I was crazy. I should probably just stay right here and wait for whatever this was to be over, right? Just close my eyes, put my head on my knees, and block it all out. I allowed myself to fall backward onto my ass and did exactly that.

I heard Cassandra grunt with disgust. Except I didn't. I couldn't have heard that. Because she wasn't really real and I wasn't really here and none of this was really happening.

But... what if I was wrong? What if all of this was actually real? If all these people were real, and if the Breach was real, then that would mean...

I did some quick moral calculations.

If this was just a dream – which it almost certainly was – and I did nothing then I'd eventually wake up. Whereas if I did try help then my dream would probably turn into a really bad nightmare but I'd still eventually wake up.

If this was a hallucination – the second most likely scenario – and I did nothing, then I'd... what? Continue to drool on myself in a padded room somewhere? But what if I wasn't in a padded room yet? What if I was projecting this hallucination onto the real world? If I tried to help, I might _think_ that I was attacking a demon but I would actually be hurting a real person. So if I did try to help, I couldn't fight. That was probably for the best anyway because I didn't really know how.

And finally, if by some INCREDIBLY IMPROBABLY TINY chance that this was actually real and I was actually in Thedas? If I did nothing then Corypheus would conquer Thedas and millions of people would die. People who might actually be real people not just fictional characters in a video game. But if I tried to help – and didn't get myself killed or otherwise fuck things up – then I could save them just like I did in the game. Maybe I could even use what I knew and save _more_ people.

I took a shaky breath and looked Cassandra in the eye. “Okay,” I nodded. “I'll help.” She pulled me up to my feet.

I didn't really pay attention to Cassandra's monologue as she led me through town. Everyone thinks I'm guilty, blah blah blah – I'd already heard this speech each time I'd started a new playthrough. Instead, I spent the time gaping at my surroundings.

Haven was _much_ bigger than portrayed and there were a _lot_ more people than NPCs. I realized that of course this had to be the case. Most functions of daily life had been omitted from the game whereas real people need places to sleep, to cook, to eat, to bathe, to use the toilet... I grimaced. I was not looking forward to the toilet facilities.

At the edge of town, Cassandra abruptly stopped, turned, and pulled out a dagger. I sucked in my breath in alarm before I remembered that she was just going to free my hands.

“There will be a trial. I can promise no more,” she told me as she cut the rope.

I reached up to rub my forehead – my head was pounding – then froze as something occurred to me. Was I here as myself, or was I here in the body of one of the player characters?

I didn't have to crane my neck to look Cassandra in the eye, so not Cadash.

I touched my ears. Not Lavellan.

I ran my hands over the top of my head. Not Adaar.

Human, then. Was I Trevelyan? Or myself?

There were no mirrors handy so I thought for a second, then pulled my right shirtsleeve up to my elbow and examined my arm. Ah, yes, there it was. The scar from when my childhood cat scratched the hell out of me. I was here in my own body.

I felt a pang of disappointment; Evelyn Trevelyan was probably in a lot better shape than me. The initial adrenaline spike from waking up in a dungeon had worn off and I was already beginning to feel fatigued despite not even being at the bridge yet. Climbing all the way up to where the Temple of Sacred Ashes once stood was _really_ going to suck.

I looked up from my self inspection to find Cassandra impatiently scowling at me.

“Come. It is not far,” she urged and began walking up the path.

“I know. You want to test my mark on something smaller than the Breach,” I said absentmindedly as I tried to remember everything that would happen on the way up the mountain. Cassandra looked back at me and narrowed her eyes for a moment before continuing forward.

Oh, right. That was supposed to be _her_ line. She must have felt like I'd stolen the words right out of her mouth.

That opened a whole new can of worms. I turned it over in my head while I struggled to keep up with Cassandra's long strides. I didn't just have to remember what was going to happen, I also had to decide what to do with that information. How much should I reveal? How do I explain how I know what I know? Should I even attempt to change events? What about the Butterfly Effect? If I followed the script of the game then at least I'd know which series of decisions could lead to victory, whereas if I start changing things then _anything_ could happen.

I thought about the people of Haven. All those possibly very real people who'd just given me the stink-eye while we strolled through town. If I remembered correctly, roughly half of them would die when either the Red Templars or Venatori attacked.

That made my decision for me.

“Hey, Cassandra?” I said. She tilted her head toward me to acknowledge that she was listening but didn't stop her forward march. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and blurted, “I've seen the future.”

 


	3. God-fucking-dammit, Cassandra!

_Previously on YAMGITSIAIF: I took a deep breath, exhaled, and blurted, “I've seen the future.”_  

 

“Ugh,” Cassandra's disgusted grunt carried a tinge of exasperation this time. “More nonsense.”

“No, I really have!” I protested, jogging a little to keep up with her (damn her long legs!) as she strode up the path that wound between the impromptu barricades. “A bunch of different versions of the future, even. I know which decisions will–“

A stabbing pain in my hand interrupted me and I fell to my knees in the snow.

“The pulses are coming faster now,” Cassandra observed as she helped me back to my feet. “The larger the Breach grows, the more rifts appear, the more demons we face.”

“Cassandra, please listen to me!” I pleaded as I stumbled along behind her. “I really have seen the future. I can also tell you who is behind–“ I cut myself off. We'd reached the bridge.

“Wait!” I grabbed Cassandra's arm. “I'll prove it to you. Any second now, the Breach will spit out a meteor that destroys this bridge and then we'll be attacked by two demons.”

I realized what I'd just said and started waving my arms and shouting at the soldiers at the other end. “EVERYBODY, GET BACK! GET OFF THE BRIDGE!”

“I don't know what you expect to achieve with these lies but they will not sway me,” Cassandra lectured as she grabbed me by the wrist and began dragging me forward across the bridge. I tried to dig in my heels but it was futile because she was much, much stronger than me.

“No, Cassandra, it's not safe, we can't –“

The meteor arrived on schedule.

The bridge collapsed beneath our feet. I rolled with it as it fell, then lay gasping on the ice amidst the rubble. Everything hurt. Something green flickered in my peripheral vision.

“Stay behind me,” Cassandra ordered, and advanced on the first demon.

“No, wait, I told you there are _two_ ,” I wheezed but the fall had knocked the wind out me. I couldn't speak above a whisper.

My skin crawled with horror as tendrils of black smoke began to ooze out of the pool of green light forming next to me. I scrabbled back away from it as best I could, shards of rock and ice cutting into my hands. I needed to run, to hide – I tried to get up but slipped on the ice as a sharp pain in my right ankle stopped me. Broken? Or just sprained? Either way, it wouldn't hold my weight. I couldn't even stand, much less run.

The demon coalesced in front of me in a final bright flash of green light. It was hideous. A giant mouth dominated its face. It had no skin; its arms were just a ropy mass of purple muscles ending in long black talons. It stunk of dead rotting animal.

The shade roared and came at me. I flailed around wildly for something to hold it off with and my left hand closed around a wooden staff. I gripped one end tightly with both hands and kept the other end pointed at the demon, hoping that the staff would prove to be longer than the reach of the creature's claws.

I wondered if I was actually pointing a broom at a nurse in a mental institution.

I tried to hold it off, but it didn't need to touch me to hurt me. It gurgled something and I felt myself suddenly weaken. The staff slipped from my bloody grip as I sank back against the rocks and ice. I felt my heart rate slow as the cold spread rapidly through my body. The edges of my vision began to black out.

I heard Cassandra shout something in the distance. The demon must have turned away from me then, but I was only vaguely aware of what was happening around me. Instead, all my attention was focused on my struggle to breathe. In, out, in, out. I could hear my pulse in my ears and could tell that it was beating much too slowly.

I don't know how long I lay there like that before I was jerked upright into a sitting position and a flask was pressed to my lips.

“Drink this potion,” Cassandra commanded. I took a swallow. It tasted like dirt, but I didn't mind as I felt a gentle warmth suffuse my body. I guzzled the rest and then stared at my palms in fascination as all the little cuts healed before my eyes.

“God-fucking-dammit, Cassandra!” I screamed at her as soon as I caught my breath. “I _told_ you what was going to happen.”

“A lucky guess,” she dismissed my words with a scowl. “Get up.”

I staggered to my feet. My ankle still hurt but the potion had healed it enough for me to stand if I leaned on the staff I'd found for support.

Cassandra led me along the frozen riverbed, dispatching demons along the way. I hung back, grateful that she didn't seem to expect me to help her fight like my characters had in the game. We finally reached the bottom of a long set of stone stairs cut into the side of a steep hill. I sat on one of the steps to rest before continuing and gestured at her to wait.

“Look, I know things about you, things I shouldn't know.” I desperately tried to think of what might convince her. “Like, your brother Anthony was a dragonslayer. He was murdered by blood mages. And you had a mage lover named Regalyen, Regaylen, something like that.”

“All that proves is that you have competent spies,” she replied as she scanned the terrain for more enemies.

“You love Varric's _Swords and Shields_ books,” I blurted. She actually turned and looked at me for that.

“No I do not,” she lied.

“Yes you do _too_ ,” I retorted. “You're a _huge_ fangirl. You're desperately waiting for him to publish the next chapter because – “ I racked my brain, trying to remember what she'd gushed about. “ – because you're dying to know what happens to the Knight-Captain character. She'd been framed for something she didn't do or something like that.”

“Many people read Varric's books. You could say that to any of them and it would be true,” she argued, but there was finally a hint of doubt in her voice. “Quit stalling. We're almost to the first rift.”

I had to lean heavily on Cassandra for support to make it up the stairs and she all but carried me up the last few. This was way more exertion that I was used to. My legs had turned to jelly, I had to pant for breath, and I felt like I was going to throw up.

“Stay here,” Cassandra commanded, dropping me to lean against a rock as soon as we reached the top. “I must help them!” She ran toward the rift and engaged one of the several demons being fought off by Varric and Solas.

Oh, shit. Solas. Fen'harel. Trespasser. What the fuck should I do about _him_?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI this fic will contain spoilers for Trespasser and pretty much everything else too.


	4. On hiatus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies but I'm going to be putting this story on hold for a while.

Hi! I'm still excited about writing this story but I've realized that to do my ideas justice, I'm first going to need to complete a few more playthroughs, transcribe and analyze the game dialogue to get the other characters' voices right, (re)read and take notes on the written source materials (e.g. World of Thedas 1 & 2, the novels, the comics, and the RPG sourcebooks), and do more research into the history, culture, economics, and politics of the real-world countries that Thedas is based on as well as on the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa.

(For those of you who also write fanfic, I'll be posting those transcripts and any other resources I develop myself or find elsewhere on AO3 in my [Dragon Age Fanfic Author Resources series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/366179).)

Unfortunately, I can't keep just going through the game plot scene-by-scene and rewriting it with my protagonist because I'm not planning for the same events to happen in the same order as they do in the game. In fact, everything is going to go rather rapidly off the rails in a flurry of unintended consequences and Butterfly Effect reverberations throughout Thedas as soon as the events of the Wrath of Heaven prologue are complete. While this story is tagged as a Mary Sue, I'm planning some major subversions of the trope as my protagonist's efforts to reform Thedas as per the ideological biases of a typical privileged modern American woman don't work out as she expects. (Someone really should have paid better attention to the reasoning behind Star Trek's Prime Directive, heh heh heh...)

Meanwhile, since I don't want to lose momentum in my attempts to learn to write fiction, and since I have some other self-insert fantasies that don't fit into my main plot, I'll probably be writing some other short Modern Girl in Thedas stories while I work on the background the research for this story. So if you enjoy the MGIT subgenre, I encourage you to subscribe to [my AO3 author profile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/imjusthereforthefanporn/pseuds/imjusthereforthefanporn) and also be sure to check out other people's stories in the [Modern Day OCs in Thedas collection](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Modern_Day_OCs_in_Thedas).

Thanks for reading and for all your kind words!


End file.
